Fall River casino not a sure bet

Thursday

Mar 13, 2014 at 11:03 PMMar 13, 2014 at 11:08 PM

By STEVE DeCOSTAsdecosta@s-t.com

By STEVE DeCOSTAsdecosta@s-t.comFall River Mayor Will Flanagan seems to think it's a slam dunk.

In announcing on Twitter and his Facebook page that Foxwoods and its partners had secured options on 30 acres in the South End of the city, Flanagan said: “A casino will be built in Fall River creating thousands of jobs for our residents and generating millions of dollars in revenue for public safety and education. This is a reality!”

Not quite yet.

Foxwoods still has a number of legal hurdles to clear, including the negotiation of a host community agreement and passage of a public referendum. And in four previous attempts to expand its gaming empire beyond its massive resort in southeastern Connecticut, Foxwoods has failed.

“They've never pulled off a successful project other than (the original casino), going back to the early 2000s,” said Clyde Barrow, who has been observing the New England gambling scene for more than a decade as director of the UMass Dartmouth Center for Policy Analysis.

“There was a time they were down in Louisiana, they were in the Caribbean. They tried to do Philadelphia, that fell through,” Barrow said. Most recently, Foxwoods' initial foray into Massachusetts was rejected by Milford voters in a referendum.

“They've never successfully pulled off a project,” Barrow said. “History is history.”

While neither Flanagan nor Foxwoods revealed the specific site chosen, the Fall River Herald News cited sources in City Hall as saying it was the New Harbour Mall on William S. Canning Boulevard.

That location has pluses and minuses, Barrow said.

“In one sense, it's a good site for a convenience facility. It's right off Route 24. It's on the Rhode Island border, easy access, plenty of space. It's in a commercial district. That'll be a pretty good position to pretty much put Newport (Grand) out of business.”

On the other hand, “I sure don't see it as a site for a $500 million resort,” Barrow said. “I think if you were going to build something like that, you'd want to do it on the waterfront.”

“Probably it was cheap,” Barrow said of the chosen site. “This is a dying mall anyway. They've lost all their anchor tenants. The theater closed. There isn't much left there.”

Steve Norton, a retired gaming executive who at one time had an interest in developing a casino in the Hicks-Logan neighborhood, said he was perplexed by the choice. “I don't know why Foxwoods decided they like Fall River better than New Bedford,” which he called “a perfect community” for a casino.

Norton said he had pitched New Bedford to Foxwoods chief executive Scott Butera. “I called him personally about it. I don't know what was in Scott's mind, but it probably had something to do with the mayor.”

New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell has described himself as a skeptic who would need to be convinced about the value of a downtown casino.

The licensing of a casino in Southeastern Massachusetts is expected by the end of November, months later than the Western Massachusetts and Greater Boston casinos, delayed by language in the enabling legislation giving a head start to the Mashpee Wampanoag. So far, the tribe has failed to receive the necessary federal approvals.

With the preliminary deadline for applications long since passed, the Southeastern Massachusetts license can only be issued to KG Urban Enterprises, which is proposing a casino on the site of an abandoned power plant on the New Bedford waterfront or an applicant — such as Foxwoods — that has been rejected for the slots parlor license or a casino license in another region.

Andrew Stern, managing director and principal in KG Urban, said: “It would be nothing short of tragic if we ended up with the Southeast license being issued to a former shopping mall to a company that showed up a few months before the license was issued after losing a referendum in another region.”

Stern said the Fall River site “doesn't deliver a higher purpose, whereas in New Bedford we're part of a $50 million brownfield cleanup on the harbor.”

In discussions with the skeptical Mitchell, “We've never asked the mayor to support casino gaming in general,” Stern said. “We're asking him to support this one project that cleans up the Cannon Street site,” creates jobs and works within the existing neighborhood.